How Back To The Future Inspired Pulp Fiction
What if I told you Pulp Fiction makes multiple references to Back to the Future... Would that seem reasonable to you?
Marty McFly is the Christ. Let's just get that out of the way.
Does he look like the Christ?
In 2015 Back to the Future Day came and went and it’s been fun to read about all the fan theories and labyrinthian Easter Eggs that folks have discovered in the Back To The Future series over the years. The re-watching of the BTTF series has lead yours truly to notice that Marty McFly is a “christ figure” who must save the world from Doc Brown’s infernal machine. Within the first BTTF Marty declares that his mother was probably born a nun and exclaims to his 1955 father, "Jesus, George, it's a wonder I was even born!" Given a nun’s vow of celibacy that would make Marty the product of a virgin birth.
That's the power of love...
Now some may make the point that I’m seeing what I want to see; making connections that are nothing more than a series of coincidences. And I would argue that Marty is a product of divine intervention. Soon our discussion would seem vaguely familiar if we would happen to be sitting in a diner just a few seats down from pumpkin and honey bunny.
Mine's the Delorean that says "Bad Marty McF..." Wait!
Christ figures are a popular motif in much of western literature and film. In BTTF Doc Brown lists the birth of Christ as one of the dates the time machine could visit (ironically listed as year zero Dec. 25) and when Marty travels to 1955 he winds up in Otis Peabody's cow barn.
away in a manger...
Well, what if I were to tell you that Quentin Tarantino made a nod to Back to the Future’s christ figure in his cinematic masterpiece Pulp Fiction by casting Eric Stoltz as the drug dealing Lance?
Are you ready for the Pepsi Perfect Challange?
Any decent BTTF buff knows that the OMM was Eric Stoltz. Five weeks of footage exist of Mr. Stoltz getting heavy with the cast of BTTF and some of the footage in the final film is him playing the role though we never see his face in the final cut. Director Robert Zemeckis just wasn’t getting the funny from Stoltz so he was replaced by a funnier Michael J. Fox. The reference to the alternate footage is made in the TV series Fringe in which alternate timelines exist for various time/inter dimensional travel reasons.
Now I've geeked too far!
Lance in Pulp Fiction is a christ figure? Sure, kids. He’s present at Mia Wallace’s resurrection and if you look just over his shoulder before Vincent Vega penetrates her heart with adrenaline there are Christmas lights dangling from the chandelier. But then you look back at Lance again and see that...well... he kinda looks like Jesus Christ.
Is there anything more chickenshit than keying another man's car? Let us pray.
Pulp Fiction is about alternate timelines. In fact, to emphasize that point Tarantino placed clocks all throughout the movie. Some people say they’re all set at 4:20 but this is not true. They’re set at all different times and one can see this on the staircase that leads down below the hock shop.
Doc? This time it better just be plutonium in the box
When Vincent and Mia drive back to the 50’s via Jack Rabbit Slims we get a brief reference to Doc Brown’s time machine:
Great Scott!
Here the couple who really shouldn’t “couple” dance to a Chuck Berry song. When Marty brings his 1950’s teenage mom to the dance he, well, inspires Chuck Berry. Marty of course does this so his mom and dad will hook up and thus insure he won’t be erased from the space/time continuum. Vincent visits the bathroom at Mia’s duplex after the dance so he doesn’t end up like Tony “Rocky Horror” and get tossed through a plate glass window.
Mia Wallace claimed the only time Tony touched her is when he shook her hand on her wedding day....aye!!! WAIT A MINUTE!
Vincent’s constant bathroom breaks are understandable given he’s a heroin user. But they can also be viewed as his exit from the space time continuum. It’s been noted that when he enters the water closet bad things tend to happen in his absence. Doc Brown came up with time travel while trying to hang a clock in the bathroom. He slipped and hit his head and when he came back into consciousness he saw in his mind the flux capacitor. The device necessary for time travel. Bad things started happening from that point on. It seems visits to the bathroom are essential if one wants to escape time’s unrelenting grasp.
Let me tell you where time travel comes from, son.
Butch’s pursuit of time travel, symbolized in his father’s watch, is metaphorical as well. His timeline starts with the sounding of the boxing ring’s bell. He escapes the fight’s aftermath via taxi; the getaway starting with the pulling of the fare clock’s handle. Butch is on the clock and his life depends on being on time. So when he risks everything to retrieve his father’s watch he’s literally trying to get back in time. That’s why his descent into the basement is framed by clocks all telling different times. Without his father’s watch he’s out of sync and cannot “travel”.
We've all laid like this on the hotel bed after a shower ...
...and had Mary/Fabienne touch our feet.
It’s fun to note that when Butch considers various weapons that he may take with him into the basement he holds a hammer, a baseball bat, a chainsaw and then finally a katana. All of these weapons appear in later Tarantino films. A similar technique is employed in BTTF where the opening camera pan of Doc Brown’s lab/home show’s various clock’s that depict scenes that will later occur in the film. Tarantino’s imitation of this scene is a nod to BTTF.
Foreshadowing
Back to Vincent and Mia though. After driving back from the 50’s Mia OD’s and Vincent exclaims “Jesus Christ!” and drives his car into the side of Lance’s house. Lance’s house is where things get interesting. It’s a pre WWII bungalow style reminiscent of LLoyd Wright’s architecture that was used as inspiration for Doc Brown’s mansion in BTTF. Inside the run down home Lance enjoys eating sugary cereal and watching old reruns. Kinda like another guy who likes to eat sugary things from a bowl and watches reruns... George Mcfly.
Is there a sign on my lawn saying kick me?
Mi casa es su casa
Now look over George’s left shoulder. There you will see the once popular board game LIFE. This board game has a way of traveling across time and space. Specifically it has time traveled to Lance’s foyer in Pulp Fiction.
You just buzzed the side. My turn.
Note the smaller TV on top of the older furniture television set just up screen right in Lance's foyer.
Now go back to George McFly's TV complete with lamp stand in the background.
The black and white set stacked atop the old furniture piece tv set with lamp stand is mirrored in Lance's foyer. Now count to 10 and try not to scream because you need to look at the bird cage behind George McFly's head. Now take a look at what Lance was watching just before Vincent Vega called for help with Mia.
I said goddamn! Goddamn!!!
The breadcrumbs don't end there, folks. As Esmerelda Villa Lobos listens to her radio in her taxi cab we get a quick shot of her adjusting the volume.
Now let's look at the Delorean's travel date circuit board...
The taxi's red, green and yellow numbered lines seem to mirror Doc's time machine's board. If turning it to an oldie's station constitutes time travel I don't know what else does.
So.....What's in the briefcase?
It has been noted for some time that the visual inspiration for the mysterious light in Marcellus Wallace's briefcase most likely came from the 1955 noir thriller Kiss Me Deadly. Tarantino has cited the film as one of his favorites and there are other similarities in thematic modes between the two films. Though the mysterious light source is never specifically cited in Kiss Me Deadly it is implied that it is of a radioactive nature. Not unlike a certain time machine in BTTF.
Lady, the combination should've been a dead give away really.
Both Pulp Fiction and Kiss Me Deadly imply that looking at this light source can be hazardous to one's soul. Yet people are drawn to it. They are mesmerized and desire to possess it. Pulp Fiction's final diner scene has Pumpkin and Honey Bunny demanding that Samuel L. Jackson's Jules open the briefcase for them to see what's inside. Tim Roth's Pumpkin becomes stunned by what he sees.
Is that what I think it is?
Here the one who gazes, Tim Roth's diner bandit, becomes bathed in gold and red light. Vincent was also sent into a distracted state by this light earlier when he and Jules retrieved the case. "We happy" he proclaimed after snapping out of it and closing the case. This color scheme of gold and red permeates the film in general. Specifically in the title sequence.
There is one more specific instance where this gold and red light flares up in the audience's face.
Both Jules and Vincent become engulfed in the golden red light that flares into the physical film itself as they gun down Brett in his apartment. This flare or film burn is often associated with old, cheap film like the kind used by people who used to film family vacations and Christmas mornings in the 1960's. It often would appear in transitions between one recorded scene and the next. Here Tarantino has intentionally added the flare between shots of Vincent and Jules as both a nod to the "pulp" nature of his film as well as a mirror of the briefcase light that transfixes the viewer who looks within. The viewer in this case is us, the audience gazing into Tarantino's "briefcase" of a film. The film lingo of a "shot" being the single action caught in one moment on film is reflected in Jules' and Vincent's "shots" from their guns. This moment is totally what you think it is and "we happy".
Back to the Future uses it's plutonium as a meta reference to film as well. When Marty is trying to escape the Libyans in the Delorean he inadvertently reaches the infamous 88 MPH mark. Here we get the famous time travel flare that begins at the nose of the vehicle and engulfs the time machine.
Now, this moment is a cinematic hallmark in movie making. Even people who have never seen the film know this moment instantaneously. What's often missed or forgotten is what Marty almost drives into before reaching 88 MPH.
The lens flare that blinds both Marty and the audience pops up in the center of the window just moments before he/we would have plowed right into an instant photo developing booth. A place that once cheaply developed your family vacation and Christmas photos before the advent of the iphone. When Marty returns to 1985 the Delorean crashes into the downtown movie theater that has now been converted into a church. Here the pulp trope of time travel has meta-morphed into narrative travel. The sparks thrown off by the time machine was the contact of the narrative causing friction across the physical film of the movie as Marty started to break the fourth wall.
When Butch rides in the taxi from his fight the rear window displays old black and white cityscapes taken from stock noir films of the 40's and 50's. The characters themselves are stock types taken from noir pulp movies and upon pulling up in to the Jack Rabbit Slims' parking lot Mia tells Vincent to not be a ...rectangle.
The expectation of the phrase is "Don't be a square" but both the fact that Mia somehow magically makes dotted lines appear on the screen and that her "square" is actually the shape of a movie screen calls our attention to the fact that we are watching a film. The double meaning in her statement to Vincent is "Don't be a stock character, Vincent." Wake up! You're in a film.
Back to the Future's Marty repeats often how his experience in 1955 is like a dream. He keeps wanting to wake up and after hitting his head on the road he later wakes up and believes it was all a dream. This and repeated references to film (1955 Doc Brown scoffs at the discovery that Ronald Reagan is the president in 1985. "The movie star! Whose the Vice President? Jerry Lewis?") are veiled metaphors to the fact that we are watching a film narrative. The act of passively watching film puts the brain into a trance like state much like a dream and dreaming has always been associated with film.
I think VR technology has a future!
In 1930 the filmmaker Jean Cocteau wrote "When I make a film, it is a sleep in which I am dreaming." Time Travel narratives are often wish fulfillment narratives just like our dreams. Like the old tale of the genie in the bottle the hero uses time travel to attain what he wants without the pesky hassles of hard work and sacrifice. He simply gets in his time machine-in this case a rare sports car- "rubs the lamp" and just arrives at his desired location in time/life. Of course the fulfillment of the wish always leads to more problems coupled with regret for the hero. Marty has inherited his problems from Doc Brown in the time machine. Butch's problems arise when he pursues the gold watch he inherited from his grandfather. Vincent inherits problems every time he shuts the bathroom door. The constant trope of attempting to beat or escape time- to escape the narrative- seems to always lead to misery. Except for Jules. He seems to be able to escape the narrative by letting go of it. He's seen something too but it's not in the briefcase. In fact Jules only wishes to return the briefcase to its rightful owner and keep it from those who would seek to use it selfishly for their own purposes.
Notice how everyone in the diner keeps their heads down during this exchange. Of course earlier they were told to keep them down but in this moment Jules is holding a sermon. The passage he quotes is not the Ezekial 25:17 of our time line. It's a misquote. It's an alternate passage that exists within this particular narrative and Jules is sorting out his own interpretation of it. By doing so he is displaying character instead of being a character. Earlier in Pulp Fiction we get a direct line to this effect as it is spoken by Harvey Keitel's Winston Wolf.
Winston has disposed of the messy Marvin timeline narrative by erasing their car and Marvin's body from existence at a wrecking yard. It's like "it never happened" and The Wolf "sees the future" as he leaves them in his sports car. Winston Wolf arrived to help Jules and Vincent by crossing town in a 10 minute leap that would take normal people 30 minutes.
It takes 30 minutes. I'll be there in 10.
The Wolf appears to be a time traveler who actually works as a mob fixer. He fixes Jules' and Vincent's problems almost instantly when he meets them at Jules' friend's house in the valley. Jules' friend is Jimmy who is played by the writer and director of the film Quentin Tarantino.
So are you asking me for help as a friend or as the writer director of this film?
Here the character's are relieved of their bloody gangster clothes and washed down by the literal writer director of this film Mr. Tarantino. Though within the narrative of the film he is known as "Jimmy", in this moment Tarantino has enacted a very literal Deus Ex Machina moment to "jimmy" the film for his characters. Just moments after arguing whether or not the Hand of God came down and made bullets miss both Jules and Vincent in the apartment scene they are being saved from discovery by law enforcement by the actual director of the film. They are washed of their sins and given new identities much the same way Christians are washed of their sins by Christ at baptism and are reborn in the spirit with new identities in Christ.
Marty has a similar effect on the narrative in Back to the Future. By trying to fix the timeline he has altered by entering it- interrupting his parents meeting and then attempting to fix them up at the dance- he enacts his own Deus Ex Machina. Translated this term means "God from the machine" and in greek theater was a moment when a literal mechanized device would lower an actor playing God into the play so that he could fix things. Marty ceases to be a character driven by the narrative and instead attempts to fix the narrative for the characters.
Notice that George McFly is surrounded by pulp science fiction here. By the end of the film George McFly's alternate character is different from the George McFly from the beginning of the film. This is made possible by the fact that he has become a published author who used the moment he met "Darth Vader from the Planet Vulcan" in a dream to change his own narrative and his own outcome. By writing about this extra-terrestrial encounter with the divine he has affected his own narrative.
I'll wait and stream the movie version when it comes out, Dad
Jules' "moment of clarity" occurs when he realizes that God saved him from certain death. This particular scene has always stuck in my mind over the years. I noticed something odd about the scene the second time I watched the film in 1995. Before the unseen gunman jumps out of the bathroom and unloads his hand cannon on Jules and Vincent the audience can see bullet holes behind them on the wall.
This has usually been dismissed by audiences as a continuity error by Tarantino. In multiple takes while filming a scene it could be entirely plausible that the holes were missed and the scene was shot by mistake and in the break neck pace of the filming and editing process the holes were left in by mistake. This is not uncommon in film. Yet there is something intentional about this moment. It has the feeling of an "intentional mistake" left in by Tarantino. It calls attention to the fact that this is artifice we are watching. When the actor jumps out and shoots at them he does so because that is how Tarantino wrote that scene. He is in all actuality shooting blanks. The holes were placed in the wall before hand. Those are actors and this is Tarantino's camera. The whole moment brings attention to the fact that we are watching a film.
After realizing they have been missed they turn to the shooter. Jules looks directly into the camera but Vincent's gaze seems to be up and to the left of the camera's POV.
Raising their guns we get a more direct discrepancy of where the two are looking.
Then, after shooting the gunman they both look down but in different places.
It's subtle but there. The subtext of their different gazes reinforces their different points of view. Jules has become aware of the camera's gaze which means he's aware of the director as well as the audience on a subliminal level. Like the audience noticing bullet holes before the shots are fired Jules has stepped outside the narrative. He has witnessed divine intervention where Vincent only sees dumb luck. One should note that most of the holes can be seen over Jules' shoulders while directly over Vincent's right shoulder is a curtain rod that looks a lot like a crucifix. Or is it just a curtain rod? I guess in the end it all comes down to whose POV you subscribe to.
For Doc Brown his close call with bullets involves looking outside his own narrative. He cheats death by reading Marty's letter and wears a bullet proof vest in the alternate 1985.
Yes, I think it’s safe to say that Quentin Tarantino has a deep sense of ironic humor. He is in fact a crazy film buff who knows more about cinema obscura than anyone I’ve ever heard talk about cinema and it’s not outside the realm of plausibility that he wanted to show that Mr. Stoltz could indeed be funny AND Christlike in a movie about alternate time lines. Just don’t look directly into the light, my children. You’ll never see these two films the same way again.
Shield eyes from light, don't dig on swine and peace be with you.
Side Notes: -While Vincent Vega spends much of the film talking about food, eating food and making visits to the bathroom it should be noted that Butch never gets to eat anything. He talks about getting blueberry pancakes with Fabienne and even tries to toast pop tarts but circumstances always dictate that he skips every opportunity for a meal. Unless you count the one thing that Vincent compares to a foot massage. The closest Butch gets to real food, the pop tarts, ends in Vincent getting capped and falling through a shower door ala Tony "Rocky Horror".
- The combination of the briefcase is 666. Though often cited as the mark of the beast it can also be assigned to letters. In the english alphabet that would be FFF. Mia Wallace did a pilot called Fox Force Five which when described sounds an awful lot like the characters of Kill Bill Volumes 1 & 2. - Back To The Future has it's own film inspiration as well. 1984's Buckaroo Banzai across the 8th Dimension features a Ford pick up truck that has been modified for inter dimensional travel. Peter Weller's Banzai also plays guitar in his own band and the power source that enables his truck for inter dimensional travel looks a lot like the flux capacitor. It's interesting to note that the early design for Doc's time machine was a refrigerator.